Digital marketing works better for Millennials than TV

January 24th, 2012

The 79 million Millennials in the U.S. have an estimated purchasing power of $170 billion dollars per year, making them a highly attractive segment for brands to target, according to comScore vice president Bert Miklosi.

The study examined Millennials’ responses to different types of advertising, including TV and digital, compared to older generations, and how marketers can most effectively target this large and important segment.

“Their comfort-level with the Internet and technology in general makes the digital medium an ideal platform for reaching these individuals. But as is typical with younger people when compared their older counterparts, Millennials are generally more difficult to persuade via advertising, amplifying the importance of creative and messaging optimization in driving worthwhile returns from an investment in advertising to this segment. ”

Key findings highlighted in the report include:

The defining characteristics of Millennials include their comfort-level with new technologies and cultural diversity, as well as being accustomed to on-demand access to entertainment, continual stimulation and extreme multitasking.

Ad breakthrough via television advertising for Millennials was substantially lower than for older generations. However, Millennials demonstrated a higher propensity than other generations to retain a lasting impression of a television advertisement.

Millennials tend to be less interested and more difficult to connect with, capture attention, impress, convince and entertain. Millennials also appear to be more price-sensitive, perhaps due to lower disposable incomes.

Digital advertising performs better in relative terms among Millennials than does television advertising.

Across generations including Millennials, the presence of key creative elements in advertising, coined by comScore as theValidated Drivers, were shown to relate strongly to successful advertising.

Millennials are highly engaged with the content that they choose to view, within both television and digital environments. Engagement has been shown to amplify the effectiveness of advertising, so when targeting Millennials, it is important to utilize engaging content to help boost returns from investments in advertising.